The Witness Got Turned Into an NES Game and It’s Super Neat

When Jonathan Blow and Thekla Inc. released The Witness earlier this year, the complex puzzle game was met with massive praise. But if you were anything like us, you probably thought to yourself, “man this game would be great as a retro NES game.” Well don’t worry, because a solo game developer has answered the call. Dustin Long, who goes under the name dustmop, has begun to reinterpret The Witness as an old school NES adventure game. He released a completely free demo of the project, aptly named The Wit.nes, which has the player exploring the starting zone of the game. The Wit.nes manages to capture the design of the previous game’s line puzzles by scattering interact-able panels on 16 full map screens in overhead world complete with 4 way scrolling. Currently the game has 32 puzzles, all of which use various rules from the original game as a means of solving the puzzles. The game can be played on an NES emulator which is available on the download page for the demo.

The Wit.nes has been in development for 2 months and is “Aimed at both players unfamiliar with the full game who want to learn what it’s like, as well as veterans that need a fix of new puzzle panels to solve.” Long has a history with creating NES roms and games and even analyzes them on his own personal blog. The Wit.nes is a wonderful little tribute to a game that was clearly well loved. Long’s project is a beautiful representation of how games can inspire us to create our own art. Take some time to play through The Wit.nes, you definitely won’t regret it.

What other games would you like to see demakes of? Leave a comment and let us know!